Thread: Thin emulator for running WinXP programs?
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ebasconp is offline ebasconp
2010-09-26 , 15:59
Posts: 23 | Thanked: 16 times | Joined on Aug 2010 @ Bolivia
#7
But what if you use the approach i suggested, just running the program itself not the whole OS?
That would be kind of complicated, because you are suggesting implementing several things:

1. A file loader that understands how the .exe and .dll files are written (AFAIK, such format is called PE in windows).

2. A full (or at least, good) reimplementation of Windows API on top of ARM.

3. An abstraction layer to make the apps to believe that they are running on top of Windows (for example, a reimplementation of the Windows registry or other Windows specific infrastructure).

All of these things are in some extent implemented by Wine, but I do not know if it is hightly portable to other platforms different than x86.

Maybe one more feasible thing to do (though not so thin) would be use QEMU or Bochs to virtualize the whole OS; with the obvious performance hits.
Last edited by ebasconp; 2010-09-26 at 16:03.